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Alberta’s oilsands workers lead a patch-work life

They’re the “shadow population” of Alberta’s oilsands region — drawn by high salaries to travel far from home and work gruelling shifts while living in temporary camps. The long hours and isolation take a toll. Part 4 of the 2015 Atkinson Series on public policy.

A worker at the Cenovus Christina Lake project south of Fort McMurray.
About a third of the population of the oilsands region is made up of those who commute to the area and live in work camps. (Todd Korol / Reuters file photo)

“You develop an almost detached personality, because there is nothing familiar, nothing that is personal to you. And plus there are so few women.”

Zena Stirler

Safety monitor at oilsands sites

There’s lots of money to be made working in the Alberta oilsands.

But for Pierre Marier, who commutes from northern Ontario and earns upwards of $100,000 a year, it’s not exactly easy money.

“The money is good,” says the 42-year-old unionized welder. “But it comes at a price.”

For workers like Marier, the price is being away from home for half the year and living in remote, regimented work camps — or lodges, as they are often called — with thousands of other workers, mostly men.

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Oilsands workers who live in camps often work long shifts for weeks at a time, followed by rest periods when they can return home. (Todd Korol/Reuters file photo)

At the height of the tarsands frenzy a couple of years ago, the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo, which encompasses Fort McMurray and the entire oilsands region in northeastern Alberta, estimated there were 40,000 workers living in camps. They are often called the “shadow population” and account for about a third of the population of the area.

During the 2012 public hearing into Shell’s Jackpine Mine expansion, municipal officials said there was camp space for 70,000. Camp operators claimed only 52-per-cent occupancy, but the municipality believed it was more likely 70 to 80 per cent during the winter high season. Municipal officials also calculated that work camp occupancy had increased by just over 400 per cent in the previous seven years.

Work camp occupancy is considerably lower now due to layoffs and delayed construction at some plants.

According to the municipality’s 2012 census, more than half of the mobile workforce is over 35 years old, 51.2 per cent are in common-law relationships or are married, and 61.1 per cent are either apprentices or hold trades certificates or a post-secondary degree (with only 7.4 per cent of workers having less than a high school diploma).

Marier, who is single, works at the Suncor Firebag site about 140 kilometres north of Fort McMurray. Every second week he flies in on one of Suncor’s Canadair jets with dozens of co-workers. He works 12-hour days for 14 days straight.

Summer and winter he’s up at 4:10 a.m., then hits the gym, eats breakfast and arrives at the work site by 6:40. By 7 p.m. he’s in the dining room, and it won’t be long before he hits the sack to start the cycle all over again.

Then on his last day, at about 7 p.m., he flies to Edmonton, where he catches the red-eye to Toronto and then another flight to Thunder Bay. He is usually home in Hurkett, Ont., by about 10 in the morning. He is there for two weeks, fishing and spending time at his cottage, before heading back to Alberta again.

The Suncor flight is free but he pays for flights to Toronto and Thunder Bay. Those flights cost him about $10,000 a year and they are not tax-deductible.

“It’s like leading two lives,” Marier says. “When I am at home I never talk or think about work … I purge work out of my head.”

Victor Sanchez works at the Suncor Firebag site in the oilsands, where he can make up to $160,000 a year with overtime. Compared to construction sites he has worked on in Russia, he says, the Alberta camps are luxurious.

The Suncor work camp is more like a hotel. Each worker has a room with TV, telephone and Wi-Fi included. Bathrooms are shared by two people. Meals are hearty and there’s so much selection that the dining room is more restaurant than mess hall. There’s a gym and a basketball court. Some camps even have driving ranges, yoga classes and personal trainers.

The Suncor camp is dry — no alcohol allowed. And when workers get off the plane, they and their luggage are met on the tarmac with sniffer dogs trained to nose out drugs. In some camps the dogs make random checks on rooms when the occupants are at work.

Victor Sanchez of Calgary, who also works at the Suncor Firebag site and has been employed at oilsands projects for 17 years, says it’s a matter of safety on the job to make sure there are no drug users in camp. The 60-year-old adds that he likes a dry situation because there can be far too much drinking at some camps.

Marier says that despite good pay and more-than-adequate accommodation, meals and amenities, there is still a loss of freedom. Workers can’t leave the site since they don’t have their own vehicles and can’t take Suncor vehicles off the premises.

“When we are working in remote places like this we are really captive workers,” he says.

Megan Pashak hikes west of Calgary during a break from her job at the CNRL Horizon site north of Fort McMurray, where she is a passenger services agent for the aviation company that flies workers in and out of the camp. She works 14 days on, 14 days off.

Megan Pashak, 30, works at the Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. (CNRL) Horizon site north of Fort McMurray as a passenger services agent for the aviation company that flies workers in and out.

She, too, works 14 days on, 14 days off. For two weeks she starts work at 5 a.m. and finishes at 9 p.m., with some downtime depending on arrivals and departures.

“On Tuesdays, we fly 500 workers in and 500 out in three hours,” she says.

Pashak, who has a psychology degree and is single, earns about $32 an hour or about $90,000 a year, twice what she would make doing the same job at the Calgary airport. And much more than when she worked for agencies caring for children at risk

There are about 8,000 people in the CNRL Horizon camp. And despite men outnumbering women by a ratio of about four to one, Pashak says she feels very safe there.

“It’s quite strict,” she says. “There are separate housing units for women and there is a 10:30 p.m. curfew for everyone.”

It is also CNRL policy to fire a man on the spot if he is caught in the women’s dorms. Women, on the other hand, can visit the men’s quarters.

Pashak has been in the work camp long enough to know that being away from home can be very hard on workers and the people they leave behind, especially if they have children.

“I know one worker who phones home every night because that’s the agreement he has made with his partner,” she says. “Others will have a particular night of the week when they regularly call home.

“Some couples are very good at it, others are not.”

Zena Stirler once owned a hairdressing salon, but is now a safety monitor for a company that cleans and refurbishes the tanks that store upgraded bitumen before it is sent down the pipelines. She earns about $6,000 for a three-week stint.

In her former life, Zena Stirler owned a hairdressing salon. Now, at 50, she is a safety monitor for a company that cleans and refurbishes the huge tanks that store upgraded bitumen before it is sent down the pipelines.

The work is dirty, dark and dangerous, and it’s her job to make sure that the people cleaning out the tanks follow safety regulations so they aren’t overcome by toxic fumes or other hazards.

Inside a tank, it’s completely dark except for the small pinpoint lights wielded by each worker as they sandblast the lower edges, where the bitumen solids have settled. They work 10-hour days for three weeks straight and then get a week off.

“We really need trusting relationships among the workers on this job,” says Stirler. “We are working in live plants and there are dangers everywhere. And those sites are so overwhelming at first … all those massive tanks and pipes … you really have to be alert all the time.”

Stirler says she earns about $6,000 for a three-week stint a safety compliance monitor, much more than she earned as a hairstylist.

Last year she stayed at the Devon work camp south of Fort McMurray for about four months. Her accommodation wasn’t as spiffy as some other parts of the camp, and she was in a mixed dorm. But she learned to live the camp life.

“You develop an almost detached personality,” she says, “because there is nothing familiar, nothing that is personal to you. And plus there are so few women.”

But life at the Devon camp isn’t as strict as life at the CNRL camp.

“There are definitely hookups going on,” she says.

It’s extremely difficult to get into the camps unless you are an employee. They all have tight security at the entrances, and security guards patrol the grounds and hallways. Pierre Marier says workers have been told to be careful about what they say on social media about life in the camps.

Between 2008 and 2009, Angela Angel, a sociology graduate student at the University of Alberta, interviewed 16 male commuters between 21 and 59 years of age, and 18 people who worked closely with commuters, such as mental health and addiction counsellors, career counsellors and union representatives, for her master’s thesis. Interviewees were recorded but their names were not revealed.

All the workers cited money as the most important reason they work in the tarsands.

“You go to work with the idea in mind that you are going to build a paycheque,” one employee told Angel. “And that’s what it is all about, is building a paycheque. I don’t think any of us ever say to ourselves, we’re going to build Syncrude, you know what I mean, or that place would never get built.”

Many participants talked about the danger of becoming addicted to the high wages and buying toys such as giant trucks and boats. Angel found this kind of spending often led to “deep unhappiness,” whereas the workers who were paying off their mortgages or sending the kids to university were much more stable.

Participants also talked about the monotony of life in a work camp.

“Everything in your life is taken from you,” one worker said. “Your family is taken from you, your friends are taken from you, your freedom is taken from you. It’s just like living in jail, only you’re getting paid. You go from your room to the lunch trailer, to the bus, to work for 12 hours, and back to your room. It is very regimented and you fall into a routine and the days blend together and you don’t even know what day it is until one day they tell you you’re going home. There is no such thing as a weekend; every day is a Monday morning.”

When Angel asked, “If there is one thing you could change about your work situation, what would it be?” most workers who travelled to Fort McMurray in their personal vehicles described the anxiety associated with their six-hour commute on busy Hwy. 63, where horrific accidents are not infrequent, as the worst aspect of being a mobile worker in the oilsands.

One key participant who worked in the helping professions said that “loneliness” was a serious issue, particularly for men.

More than half of the mobile workforce of the oilsands region is over 35 years old, according to the 2012 census. Most are either apprentices or hold trades certificates or a post-secondary degree. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post file photo)

A union representative said there was “rampant pornography” in the workers’ rooms.

Others told Angel that 40 to 50 per cent of workers engage in illicit drug use — either to enhance work performance or to cope with stress.

The CNRL and Suncor work camps are at the higher end for accommodation, food and other amenities.

According to evidence presented at the public hearing for Shell Canada’s Jackpine Mine expansion, some camps don’t have the required permits. During inspections in 2011, the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo found 21 unpermitted camps accounting for 12,000 beds. In 2012, the municipality found 28 camps that were not permitted. The municipality also indicated there are cases of permitted but non-compliant camps, usually involving a number of residents that exceeds the permitted capacity.

Even work camps with permits are often not monitored by provincial authorities.

Municipal officials also expressed concern about the possibility of forest fires in remote camp locations.

“For many camps, workers are living in stacked trailers, and there is only a single access road,” they told the hearing.

Victor Sanchez worked on construction sites in Siberia for five years; work camps and working conditions in the oilsands seem luxurious compared to the thin soup and windswept barracks in Russia. In the oilsands, he says, the quality of the camp matters because if it’s not up to scratch, qualified tradespeople won’t work there.

Sanchez has been working on various oilsands projects with the pipefitters union for 17 years. With overtime he can make up to $160,000 a year. He figures he will retire in a couple of years and have saved enough money for his wife and him to live very comfortably.

Pierre Marier says that everyone who works in the oilsands has “an expiration date. They get fed up with the corporate nonsense.”

One thing that particularly irked him this year, and was also mentioned by other workers, was the company skimping on food. Because the price of oil went down, peanut butter and fresh fruit suddenly disappeared from bag lunches.

“Even though money is the driving force,” he notes, “at some point (workers) decide it’s simply not worth it anymore.”

As for him, he says he still has a few more years to make the trek from northern Ontario to the Alberta oilsands.

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